Trump's Flip Flops Pit Him Further Against Today's Republican Party

The Sunday morning politics shows were particularly illuminating this week.

Hillary Clinton talked about her impending general election match-up with Donald Trump on Face the Nation. "For a lot of people, again, who take their vote seriously and who really see this as a crossroads kind of election, I am asking people to come join this campaign. And I've had a lot of outreach on Republicans in the last days who say that they are interested in talking about that," Clinton said.

This was the perfect time for Clinton to highlight the rift in the GOP over Donald Trump’s nomination and the number of prominent Republicans who maintain that they’re still #NeverTrump. To this end, Clinton is even launching a group called “Republicans for Hillary” and she already has a number of influential backers including ex-CIA director David Petraeus and former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Clinton made clear that she is planning on running an issues campaign and stay away from an ugly battle with Trump, which will inevitably be hard to control for her.

That said, and it shouldn’t come as any surprise, the real meat came out of Trump’s interview with George Stephanopoulos. As a candidate who has made it fashionable to flip flop on the issues, Trump took it to a whole new level with a reversal on his tax plan.

Trump’s proposed plan would’ve given the top 0.1% earners an astounding $1.3 million tax cut according to the Tax Policy Center. What happens to the middle class? Their cut would’ve only been $2,700. In this way, Trump’s plan sounded like pretty run-of-the-mill Republican.

But no more.

"I'm not under the illusion that that's going to pass. They're going to come to me. They're going to want to raise it for the rich. Frankly, they're going to want to raise it for the rich more than anybody else," Trump told Stephanopoulos. "But the middle class has to be protected. The rich is probably going to end up paying more. And business might have to pay a little bit more. But we're giving a massive business tax cut."

Trump was already at odds with the Republican party and this is likely to even further exacerbate that divide. There’s very little that’s more core to today’s conservativism than offering tax cuts to stimulate the economy. Trump has always been more embracing of a progressive model – he even recently admitted that he’d be open to raising the federal minimum wage – but at least his tax plan was a proposal that Republicans could support.

Considering this change, there’s very little uniting Trump with the Republican party he will be leading. He has a progressive tax plan, has shown support for a universal healthcare plan, praised Planned Parenthood for doing some “very, very good things” and has clearly stayed out of the fray on gay marriage.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the general election. Quite the contrary, actually. But it is certainly a bad thing for the GOP making peace with their presumptive nominee.

Just as in everything else this campaign season when it comes to Trump, he’s turned politics on its head.